Art & Architecture

This is a very plain station. Its large rectangular volume, built cut-and-cover, is walled with eggshell-coloured ceramic. The floors are done in brown tiles. A mezzanine near the western end of the volume hosts the ticket hall and overlooks the platforms on both ends; the ticket hall’s fairly broad fare-paid zone is connected to the platforms by two staircases on each side.

The pale expanses of the walls are punctuated by panels of coloured tiles rising to the ceiling, each panel with a different colour scheme and pattern. Although they are the work of the noted ceramist Claude Vermette, these panels, installed during the station’s construction, were originally not construed as an artwork, since the integration of art into the stations’ architecture had not yet begun and so that it would be easier for the transit company to remove them if it decided to do so. Fortunately, the STM later gave them the recognition they are due.

In the central area, the staircases are divided from the platform by screens of orange tiles. This is the only part of the station with benches, and the rest of the platform area suffers from a complete lack of seating.

The single headhouse is quite small and somewhat shabby, as it was meant to be only temporary but has now lasted some six decades. Its overhanging flat roof is supported by an exposed framework of steel beams. Numerous different building projects for the surrounding lot, into which the entrance would have been integrated, have all come to nothing.